Something
New Under the Sun: The Mongol Empire’s Innovations in Steppe Political
Organization and Military Strategy

Thomas J.
Barfield
Boston University

for

The 8th International
Congress of Mongolists
Ulaan Baatar, August 5-12, 2002

At
the time of Chinggis Khan’s birth in 1162 Mongolia had been weak and
divided for more than three centuries.Endemic fighting among the steppe nomadic peoples had made everyday life
itself insecure and political unification appeared unachievable.Yet by the time Chinggis Khan died in
1227, Mongolia was united, the center of the world’s largest land empire,
and the dominant power in Eurasia.How are we to understand this rapid transformation and its consequences?The most common historical approach
explains the emergence of the Mongol Empire as the product of long-term
historical developments in Central Eurasia similar to those that had led to the
emergence of previous steppe empires such as the Xiongnu (209 B.C.-A.D. 155) or
the Turks and Uighurs (552-840).From this perspective, the Mongol Empire was only a structurally larger
version of its predecessors, its political and military organization derived
from a common steppe heritage that was in no way unique to the Mongols.

In
fact the Mongol Empire was striking different from earlier steppe empires and
bore little resemblance to them. We can see this in three important areas.First the Mongol Empire arose in
opposition to the usual pattern of relationships between China and the steppe
that facilitated the emergence of nomadic empires in Mongolia.Second, the Mongol Empire radically
transformed steppe nomadic society by breaking up the existing tribal system
and replacing it with a centralized political system of rule that had never
previously existed on the steppe. Third, the Mongols ended up ruling
neighboring sedentary states directly rather than extorting them as earlier
steppe empires had done.Because
the genesis of these differences all derive from the problems Chinggis Khan
faced in uniting the steppe and then maintaining power, his personal
contribution to the process was absolutely vital.

The Pattern of Relations between China and Mongolia

The
interaction between China, the steppe nomads of Mongolia, and the mixed forest
and steppe tribes of Manchuria produced two striking patterns of development
that determined both the structure of political relations on the steppe and the
pattern of foreign rule in China: 1) a bi-polar frontier with a unified China
facing a unified Mongolia and 2) transborder states ruling north China and
Mongolia fragmented.[1]

Most
successful empires in Mongolia appeared in tandem with native Chinese dynasties
that ruled all of China.This
pattern is the reverse of the generally accepted premise that the nomads of
Mongolia grew stronger as China grew weaker.Instead, nomadic empires and important native Chinese
dynasties rose and fell together, a pattern particularly apparent in the
relationships between the Han and Xiongnu and the Tang and Turks/Uighurs.These nomadic empires derived their
stability from the extortion of direct subsidies and trading privileges from
native Chinese dynasties.Far from
wishing to conquer China, steppe empires were structurally dependent on the
existence of their counterparts to supply them with the wealth they
redistributed to their followers in Mongolia.While these relationships were initially established by
force, over time they became more symbiotic.Nomadic tribes even protected declining Chinese dynasties
against internal rebellions by supplying them with troops.When these dynasties finally collapsed
in the face of internal rebellions within China, the steppe nomads lost the
major source of revenue that had allowed them to maintain centralized
rule.Under these conditions
Mongolia also became fragmented politically.Local tribal leaders who had been subordinated within an
imperial structure reemerged, but without a prosperous China to extort none
were able to reestablish unity.Power
on the frontier then shifted to the formerly marginal peoples of
Manchuria.

Transborder States: Foreign Dynasties in China and Division in Mongolia

Four
out of five of the most important foreign dynasties that ruled north China had
their origins in Manchuria (Toba Wei, Liao, Jin, and Qing).All emerged in the periods of disorder
that followed the collapse of native dynasties that had ruled all of China of
centuries. That so many foreign dynasties should come from the northeast
appears to be an anomaly, since it was the tribes from Mongolia that were the
major threats to China's frontier in the Han, Tang, and Ming periods.Indeed, when both the steppe nomads and
China were powerful it was impossible for independent regional states to arise
anywhere along the frontier.However, in times of anarchy after native Chinese dynasties had
collapsed local tribal leaders from all sectors of the frontier attempted to
create new trans-border kingdoms.Of all these emerging regional states, the Manchurian dynasties proved
the most effective because of their strategic location and their development of
dual organizations for the administration of conquered territory.Such dual organizations employed
separate Chinese and tribal governmental structures, allowing Chinese areas to
be ruled by their own officials employing native Chinese practices, while
tribal peoples retained their own customary system.Manchurian rulers maintained their power by manipulating
these two groups, using Chinese officials and court practices to destroy tribal
autonomy while keeping the Chinese under control through the use of elite
tribal military units.

In
dealing with Mongolia, foreign dynasties employed a distinctive frontier policy
of co-optation and disruption that actively impeded the emergence of political
centralization there.Normally it
was only after these aggressive foreign dynasties were deposed and replaced by
more isolationist native Chinese dynasties that the nomads in Mongolia were
able to unify.Unlike their
foreign counterparts, native Chinese dynasties tended to ignore political
events on the steppe and so leaders there needed to concern themselves only
with other steppe nomad rivals.Once a steppe empire was united and funded by subsidies from China, the
Mongolian frontier became linear and its politics bi-polar.

The Mongols Break the Pattern

The
alternation of powerful steppe empires and native Chinese dynasties with
equally long periods of Manchurian rule in China and disorder in Mongolia was
such a regular occurrence that the pattern was broken only once over a period
of 2000 years, by the Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan.This was not because the nomadic leaders who were striving
for power on the steppe during periods of disunion were any less ambitious or
capable than the leaders who successfully unified Mongolia at other times.Rather it was because the policies of
foreign dynasties were designed first to thwart the unification of Mongolia or,
if that policy failed, to prevent any unified state from threatening China.
They did this by encouraging tribal rivalries and bloodfeuds to prevent any
single group from becoming too powerful. And should one tribe become paramount
they sent expeditionary forces deep into Mongolia to weaken them or at least
prevent them from moving against the Chinese border.For example, in the 5th century the Toba Wei
campaigned extensively against the Joujan and captured large numbers of people
and animals to keep them on the defensive.In the 17-18th centuries, the Manchu Qing dynasty
employed the “banner system” and land allocations to eastern Mongol
princes to serve as a bulwark against the more aggressive Zunghars in western
Mongolia.

When
Chinggis Khan was born Mongolia had been politically fragmented since the fall
of the Uighur Empire in 840, a period of more than three centuries in which
even the memory of earlier steppe nomadic empires had all but disappeared.Such a long period of division in
Mongolia was maintained, in part, by the interventionist policies of two
successive Manchurian states that also ruled north China: the Khitan Liao
(907-1125) and the Jurchen Jin (1115-1234).These dynasties would ally themselves with weaker tribes
against the stronger ones to create an effective coalition that would bring
down any tribal leader on the steppe who threatened to become preeminent.Of course by doing so they increased
the power of their own allies, so it was only a matter of time before they
turned against them too and switched their support to the tribes they had just
defeated.During the 12th
century, for example, the Jurchen had regularly switched their support from the
Tatars to the Mongols and back again to keep these tribes at each other’s
throats and to bring about each tribe’s destruction in turn.

Any
leader attempting to found a new steppe empire under these conditions therefore
faced incredible odds. He not only had to worry about other rival tribal
leaders on the steppe who would oppose him, but also the outside interference
he could expect to receive from north China and Manchuria should he begin to
succeed. As the Mongol Secret History makes clear, many Mongol, Tatar, Naiman and
Kerait leaders had earlier attempted the task of unification but none had
succeeded.And given the
difficulties Chinggis Khan faced just in mobilizing the support of even his own
Mongol people, few contemporary observers would have picked him as a likely
candidate for the job. Yet in the end Chinggis Khan not only unified Mongolia,
he and his successors conquered all of China and created the Yuan dynasty, the
only long-lived foreign dynasty that did not have its origins in the Manchurian
northeast.

Political Organization of Steppe Empires

The Imperial Confederacy

The
predecessors of the Mongol Empire (and indeed its successors in Mongolia following
the end of the Yuan dynasty in 1368) were imperial confederations that used the
principles of tribal organization and indigenous tribal leaders to rule at the
local level while maintaining an imperial state structure with a monopoly on
foreign and military affairs.The
top level of imperial leadership was drawn from the ruling lineage of the tribe
that founded the state.At a
secondary level descendants and collateral relatives of the ruler were usually
appointed as governors to supervise the indigenous tribal leadership in each
region. These local tribal leaders constituted the third level of organization.[2]

What
was distinctive about imperial confederacies was their incorporation of local
level tribes without destroying them.To outsiders an imperial confederacy might appear fully centralized and
in complete command of its component parts because of its monopoly on foreign
relations and its control of military affairs.But at the local level component tribes operated much as
they had before their incorporation into a unitary state. As members of the
indigenous elite of each tribe, local leaders retained considerable autonomybecause of their close ties to their own
people.And when the imperial
structure collapsed they and their tribes were ready to reemerge as autonomous
political actors.

The Mongol Empire

The
Mongol Empire had quite a different structure. It was not an imperial
confederacy but an autocratic state that from its inception broke up the
existing tribes and redistributed their people into new military units from
which they were not allowed to move.This broke up the older steppe political organization based on lineage
and clan leaders who were chieftains (tus) of their respective kinship groups
regardless of who was running the top levels.Their ability and willingness to transfer their political
allegiance from one leader to another if they received a better offer had made
it difficult for anyone to centralize power.Chinggis put an end to this after uniting the steppe and
from that point on power resided in him and his personal appointees.With the exception of a small number of
groups that had been long time supporters or with whom he had formed alliances,
none of the leaders had strong kin ties with the people they led.This change was not only unprecedented
but remarkably rapid, too.It
appears to been accomplished in less than three years between the time he first
gained control of the old Kerait confederation in 1203 and when he was
proclaimed Great Khan in 1206. Indeed a treasured reward requested by
outstanding commanders from Chinggis Khan at the1206 khurilitai was the right to
reunite with their own kinsmen.[3]

Imperial
appointment, not kinship, determined rank and authority at every level of the
Mongol Empire.Chinggis
Khan’s relatives and the Mongol tribe in general were kept at the margins
of power in favor of talented individuals.In stark contrast to the founders of imperial confederacies
who always installed their close relatives in top posts as a means to secure
their power, Chinggis Khan looked on his own relatives with considerable
suspicion and kept them out of power.During his lifetime political appointments were given almost exclusively
to men who owed him personal loyalty, such as his sworn companions (nökör), loyal household
servants and adopted sons.They
held the all the tümen (units of 10,000) commands and had the most
influence on political decision making.Later Chinggis Khan also recruited heavily from the keshig, formerly his personal
bodyguard that he had transformed into a special unit of 10,000whose members were drawn from many different
tribes.Because their individual
success was tied to their service to the Mongol Empire as a whole, no one tribe
(not even the Mongols) was able to dominate the empire’s top level
administration exclusively even after the descendants of Chinggis Khan later
made the Great Khan position hereditary.

While
the centralized and bureaucratic structure of the Mongol Empire was more
effective than any previous steppe empire, it was also unique.After the fall of the Yuan dynasty the
nomads in Mongolia would revert to their older and less centralized imperial
confederacy model of organization.This demonstrates that while the Mongol Empire succeeded in breaking up
the existing tribal structure, this change could not be made permanent.Over the next 150 years tribal groups
reemerged in Mongolia as central control weakened and by the time the Yuan
dynasty was driven out of China decentralized tribal organization was once
again the norm in Mongolia.Although it should be noted that the changes wrought had been so great
that there was practically no continuity between them and the tribes that had
existed at the time of Chinggis Khan.

Mongol military organization and foreign policy

The
Mongols created the largest empire the world has ever seen.Unlike earlier nomadic empires that
dominated only the steppelands, the Mongols conquered most of Eurasia,
destroying powerful and well-armed sedentary states in the process.This raises two questions: Why was the
Mongol military so much more effective than previous steppe empires given that
the most important weapon for both remained the mounted archer?Why did the Mongol Empire conquer its
neighbors rather than extort them as was the more common strategy of steppe
empires based in Mongolia?

Military organization

In
many ways the Mongol army was similar to its Xiongnu and Turkish
predecessors.It consisted almost
exclusively of cavalry: mounted archers armed with short and long range arrows,
sabers, lances, and maces.They
wore steel cap helmets and armor consisting either of lacquered hide or
overlapping iron scales.Organized
around decimal units of 10, 100, 1000, the largest Mongol tactical division was
the tümen
of 10,000 men.Although the
decimal system had been employed by the Xiongnu, in an imperial confederacy
unit commanders were also tribal chiefs in their own right and so often decided
on their own what orders to accept.The Mongol armies had no autonomous tribal base so its commanders could
expect absolute obedience down the whole chain of command.Like most nomad armies the total number
of Mongol troops was surprisingly small.At the time of Chinggis Khan's death in 1227 the it consisted of only
about 138,000 effectives, and even at the height of the empire a generation
later it had about twice that number.[4]

What
distinguished the Mongol military from its predecessors, however, was its iron
discipline and central control, a model of organization first developed by the
Manchurian Khitan who had conquered northeastern China three centuries earlier,
but never previously employed in Mongolia.[5]Xiongnu and Turkish cavalry armies had
tended to be disorganized in battle, with each individual fighting for his own
gain.The Mongol army was trained
to fight as a coordinated group following signals from flags or horns.Those individuals who broke ranks
either to advance or retreat, those who engaged in personal combat without
regard to orders, or those who stopped to loot were severely punished.Nobody, under pain of death, was
allowed to move to another unit without permission.Because his trusted military commanders were not rivals for
political power, Chinggis Khan gave them a great deal of autonomy to carry out
his overall strategy.And he was a
brilliant talent spotter, for out of the Mongol ranks rose a series of
worldclass generals who led his armies to victory across Eurasia.

But
perhaps Chinggis Khan’s unique innovation was his incorporation of
military engineers, Chinese and later Muslim, into the Mongol army after his
first campaigns in China.These
specialists provided the Mongols with thousands of siege engines that could be
used to take fortified cities: catapults for hurling stones, ballistae for
throwing javelins, and other machines for throwing fire.They also provided him with the ability
to bridge rivers or even divert them to wash away enemy fortifications.All other steppe cavalry armies had
been stymied by walled cities.They could attack around them and lay waste to the countryside but they
could not take them by direct assault.Without this ability, no nomadic group could ever expect to conquer
well-defended sedentary lands.The
Mongol army could and did.It
became so efficient that none of the great walled cities of Central Asia were
able to withstand their power when Chinggis Khan launched his war there against
the Khwarazm Khan in 1218.

These
innovations gave Chinggis Khan a military machine that was completely under his
control, that fought according to a coordinated plan, and that had the ability
not only to strike deeply into enemy countries but (unlike any nomads before or
since) to engage in effective siegecraft that rendered walled cities vulnerable
to a steppe army.It was an army of
conquest, not a grand raiding force like those of the Huns in Europe or the
Xiongnu against China.And conquer
it did.

The Mongol Conquests

Many
scholars, citing the assertions of later Mongol rulers, have argued that
Chinggis Khan swept out of Mongolia intent on conquering the world.But initially he seems to have had the
same more limited goals as leaders of previous imperial confederacies: to bring
all the steppe tribes under his sway and then extort large subsidy payments and
trading rights from the rich sedentary states that bordered Mongolia. However,
because he was opposed by powerful sedentary states that preferred to fight the
nomads rather than appease them, the result was wars of annihilation that led
to the Mongols becoming rulers the territories they had only intended to
extort.[6]

The
Mongols initially launched wars against neighboring sedentary states to induce
them to make tribute payments or trade agreements.They had no interest in replacing the existing regimes if
their demands were met, let alone conquering them.At first it appeared that they, like the Xiongnu and Turks
before them, would succeed in gaining what they wanted.The Uighur ruled oases in eastern
Turkestan immediately allied themselves with Chinggis Khan and participated in
the 1206 khuriltai.
The Mongols then attacked the Tangut Xixia kingdom in northwest China in 1207
and 1209, forcing them to sue for peace and send tribute.Mongol campaigns against the Jurchen in
north China began in 1211.After
suffering three increasingly devastating invasions, the Jurchen Jin dynasty
also agreed to pay tribute to the Mongols in 1214.The Mongols then withdrew and left the Jin still in control
of most of north China.That same
year Chinggis Khan also received an embassy from the Khwarazm Khan in Central
Asia to whom he proposed making a treaty that would facilitate trade and gain
recognition of Mongol power in the east.

With
the exception of the Uighurs,[7]
all these budding relationships quickly foundered.The Jurchen had no intention of permanently appeasing the
Mongols and before the year was out they and the Mongols were at war
again.It was a war that would
last twenty years, ending only with the destruction of the Jin dynasty itself
in 1234 that would leave the Mongols the masters of north China.Equally troubling, the promising
relations with Central Asia that had been secured by a treaty in 1218 soured
when the Khwarazm Khan allowed a caravan under Mongol protection to be seized
and then murdered a series of Mongol envoys who had been sent to address the
matter.Chinggis Khan mobilized
the Mongol army to take revenge on the Khwarazm Khan.Xixia used the opportunity to break its tributary
obligations when asked to provide troops for this expedition.Even without Xixia’s aid the
Mongols overran all of Central Asia to the borders of India and western Iran in
a series of campaigns between 1219 and 1223.They utterly destroyed the region’s major cities and
Khwarazm Khan’s kingdom collapsed.However, Chinggis Khan did not even attempt to occupy more than a
fraction of the territory his armies had overrun.Instead he returned home and led a campaign against the
Tanguts to punish their earlier break.It was to be his last campaign: he died in 1227.Soon thereafter the Tangut state was
also destroyed and its cities leveled.[8]

At
the death of Chinggis Khan the Mongol Empire was no longer just an empire of
the steppe, but an empire that incorporated many sedentary kingdoms.Even if Chinggis Khan had little
interest in ruling them directly, his descendants did.Therefore one the fundamental changes
in Mongol foreign policy that followed Chinggis Khan’s death was his
descendants’ decision to reoccupy all the territories their father had
only overrun and rule them, as well as to extend Mongol power into new areas of
China, Europe and the Middle East.Mongol policy was now truly imperial in a way that the Xiongnu and Turks
had never been: combining nomad and sedentary people into a universal empire
than spanned a whole continent.If
this was not necessarily the vision of Chinggis Khan, it was he who had
provided the tools that made it possible.

Chinggis Khan’s Personal Contributions

Many
of the innovations described above can be attributed directly to Chinggis Khan,
not because he invented them but because he insisted on employing them.They were all solutions to the specific
problems he faced in coming to power and then maintaining it.Once instituted, however, they took
root and became characteristic of the Mongol Empire until it fell.

Chinggis
Khan was forced to seek out new structural solutions because he rose to power
from a marginal position.He could
not depend on the traditional political or military structures that had so well
served the founders of earlier nomadic empires.This insecurity also had a significant impact on his war
making strategy, which was much more aggressive and risky than those of other
rulers.It also had a psychological
component.Chinggis Khan’s
unyielding attacks on those who broke their treaty obligations seem rooted in
his personal experiences of betrayal before he came to power.In his mind, those broke their word or
betrayed their sworn obligations deserved only absolute destruction, whether
the offender was a single individual or an entire state.

Unlike
the founders of imperial confederacies, who were the established leaders of
their own tribes before they unified the steppe, Chinggis Khan had come to
power without much help from the Mongols or even his own relatives.A rival Mongol lineage had pushed him
into exile as a boy after his father murdered and then tried to kill him. While
he had been elected Mongol khan around 1190 he was never able consolidate his
authority and often fought with his competitor for Mongol leadership, Jamukha.And when his longstanding alliance with
Ong Khan, the Kerait leader, fell apart, he found himself deserted by almost
everyone.At his low point in 1203
at Lake Baljuna, just before he was to kill Ong Khan and take control of the
Kerait confederation himself, he had only 4600 troops at his disposal.And these were with him because they
were personally loyal, not because of tribal connections.[9]

Chinggis
Khan’s bitter experiences with steppe politics and the fickleness of
tribal military units thus shaped his ideas about political organization and
military strategy.He had finally
come to hold absolute power in a period of less than three years between 1203
and 1206, but then only when he was a middle-aged man of over forty years with
too much experience of tribal politics behind him.Having beaten his opponents on the battlefield, it is clear
that he saw the destruction and reorganization of the traditional tribal
structure as a necessary next step if he wished to stay in power.His policy innovations all had at their
core the transformation of the existing system, which encouraged disunity and
parochialism, into a centralized and autocratic state that would direct its
energies outward.These changes
included the division of people by military units instead of kinship groups,
the creation of the pan-tribal institutions like the keshig, and favoring personal
appointees over relatives.Such
innovations were not only designed to make the Mongol state and its leader more
powerful but to eliminate any possibility that the old political order might
reemergence.It was a revolution,
but not one based on class or ideology.It was a practical revolution designed to stabilize Chinggis
Khan’s own power.Similarly
the organization of the army into well-disciplined units that worked in a
coordinated fashion under a centralized command reduced the possibility of
rebellion.He encouraged personal
initiative but only in service to the Mongol state.

Chinggis Khan also broke with a time
honored nomad military strategy known from the time of the Scythians and
Xiongnu: advance before weakness and retreat before strength.Historically when the steppe nomads
were outnumbered or confronted with a well-organized opponent, they would
refuse to give battle and force their enemies to chase them.Only after the enemy had exhausted
himself chasing his illusive prey would the nomads turn to attack in
earnest.Similarly during their
incursions into China, Xiongnu or Turkish commanders would almost always
withdraw when confronted by a powerful Chinese army unless the odds were in
their favor.After all, the nomads
reasoned, they could always retire to Mongolia and attack again when chances
for victory were more certain.By
contrast, Chinggis Khan and the Mongol army under his commanders believed in
fighting decisive battles even when the odds were against them.They sought out the best tactical
position and then attacked.This
penchant for fighting decisive battles was due in part to Chinggis Khan’s
confidence in his troops and commanders.But because at first he did not have a strong tribal base at home, such
prudence could also have been interpreted as a weakness that would have
emboldened enemies among the tribes he had only recently conquered.In his career he had experienced first
hand the tendency of troops to flock to the banners of victorious commanders
and desert those who appeared to be failing.Thus, though he often employed feigned retreats in battle to
lure his enemies into traps, he never considered strategic retreats that would
have forced him delay a campaign once it had begun even when this appeared to
be the safer choice.Chinggis Khan
had won power by risking all, and would preserve it by doing the same.Later, when his brilliant victories had
solidified his base in Mongolia, his preference for fighting decisive battles
ceased being driven by any political calculations.By then the bias toward taking the offensive had simply
become one the core military doctrines that were hallmarks of the Mongol army
and its commanders.

Some Conclusions

Historians have commonly used the Mongol
Empire as a template to understand steppe nomadic empires in Mongolia in
general.Since it was the best
known and best documented, it seemed to make sense to use well described Mongol
institutions to flesh out the organization of its less well-known
predecessors.This assumed that
nothing the Mongols did was really very new or different, it was just a matter
of adjusting for the matter of scale and evolution through time.In fact we have seen the Mongols
employed very different structures than their predecessors.And it was not a matter of evolution:
following the collapse of the Yuan dynasty the tribes in Mongolia that faced
the new Ming dynasty in China had all reverted to the older imperial
confederacy model of organization.They had none of the centralizing characteristics of Chinggis
Khan’s empire and never again attempted to hold Chinese territory even
though they often overran it.For
this reason the Mongol Empire needs a fresh examination that would give due
credit to its innovations.Because
no other empire in Eurasian history was as large or as powerful as the Mongols
at their height, surely we should ask why this was so and why no other nomadic
empire in Mongolia even partially approached its success.

While Chinggis Khan retains his
preeminent stature in Mongol national history, elsewhere there has been a
tendency to diminish his personal accomplishments.As historical determinists most Marxist theorists, for
example, denied any causal role to individual leaders.They were considered interchangeable
products of their social origins in a history that only evolved as material
conditions changed.Such theories
attempted to explain the rise of the Mongol Empire in terms of class conflict
and the rise of “nomadic feudalism.”[10]But little in the pastoral economy had
changed at the time Chinggis Khan rose to power and evidence for any permanent
class divisions (as opposed to status distinctions) are hard to discern.Worse, if such new structures within
the Mongol Empire were the result of a permanent political evolution, why did
they revert back to their older forms when the political structure of the
empire weakened?

Non-Marxist theorists, however, have been
equally suspicious of “Great Man” theories that see history as the
product of individuals such as Chinggis Khan.The assumption among these scholars is that conditions for
the unification of Mongolia and the spread of nomad power were already in
place.Just what such conditions
might have been remains a matter of debate: climate change, trade
opportunities, military technology, weakness in sedentary lands, are but a few
suggestions.But they do tend to
agree that if Chinggis Khan had not unified Mongolia, some other leader
(perhaps a Kerait or Naiman khan) would have and the nomads would have had a
similar impact on history under another name.[11]

My own analysis of the Xiongnu and Turks
first predisposed me to this camp since it makes strong structural arguments
about when and why steppe empires emerged.But the more I examined the origins of the Mongol Empire,
the more I was forced to conclude that Chinggis Khan had played a greater
personal role than any other leader in Mongolia before or after.I would go so far as to contend that
had Chinggis Khan been permanently defeated or killed before 1206, no world
conquering steppe empire in Mongolia would ever have emerged.Once the empire was up and running the
personal characteristics of its leaders became less important.If a different son had inherited the
khanship after Chinggis Khan, or if Güyüg had lived longer in the
next generation, Mongol history would have taken some different turns but not
been remarkably different.A
powerful structure was already in place.But the establishment of unity in Mongolia under Chinggis Khan and his
conquests of sedentary lands were far more contingent events.When a great oak tree dominates the
landscape it is easy to forget it began its existence as an acorn, an acorn any
squirrel could have eaten.And
when Chinggis Khan was born there were very few acorns but many hungry
squirrels.Because more attention
is generally paid to the great Mongol conquests after 1206, we have
underestimated how great an achievement it was for Chinggis Khan to come to
power, unify Mongolia and reorganize it into a potent force.